Small Studio Saturday: applied communications Made a Scrapbook Out of Ney Flutes, Calypso Drums, and a Blondie Sample

Max Wood is the whole of applied communications: Bandcamp Daily calls him the band’s “sole writer and performer.” The Washington, D.C. project’s own Bandcamp bio sums up the aesthetic in a single line – “glitchy screamy mostly electronic ‘pop’ music” – and its debut, Uhhh Sort Of, has been sitting on that page since June 7, 2005, credited to Wood with a little help from Chad Matheny on two tracks. Wood revived the project in 2024, and applied communications bites the big one, released September 25, is the fruit of that second life. There is no label credited on the page. It is Wood, a Bandcamp account, and nine songs that add up to just over 23 minutes.

Bandcamp Daily’s Luke Jackson picked it as Album of the Day, and the write-up is useful for locating what changed. Where the 2005 debut, in his telling, was unified by a consistent clipped fuzz, the new record “leans into the production experience Wood has continued to develop since reviving the act in 2024 and hyper-focuses on detail.” The result is no less disorienting – Jackson lists “Arabic ney flutes, calypso drums, and lyrical subject matter that ricochets between Claire’s Accessories and Disney villains” – but the mess now looks carefully built. The tracklist bears that out: eight of the nine songs run under three minutes, “rococo” lasts barely a minute and a half, and only the closer, “peonies,” stretches past four and a half.

The sharpest moment Jackson singles out is the hand-off from “butcher” to “Gracie Mansion Comfort Zone,” a deliberate whiplash. The first, he writes, finds its groove amid clacking lounge percussion; the second is “a caterwauling spiral of free-associated lyrics, guitar plucking, and an unhinged chorus” in which Wood sings over a Blondie sample. Jackson is also frank about the voice: Wood has openly discussed his understanding that some listeners dislike his vocal delivery, and at full belt Jackson hears him “shooting for Steve Albini and landing on Liam Lynch.” That reads less like a complaint than a description of the joke – the record only works because the singer is as willing to embarrass himself as the arrangements are.

Which is why it belongs in this column. An album that arrives with a painted tortoiseshell cat perched on a stack of stereo components for a cover, a cassette as its physical edition, and a bossa nova beat on a track called “Return of Jafar” is not chasing a playlist slot; it is one person’s impulses, recorded and put out on his own terms. Jackson’s closing line is the fair summary: “Bites the Big One is a scrapbook of ideas that invites you to pick at its seams.” Nobody sanded the seams off, and that’s the point.

Hero image: “applied communications bites the big one” album cover art, applied communications. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.